Life On Board A Yacht

Life On Board A Yacht by Anonymous

Life On Board A Yacht is an erotic novel with a publication date of 1908 whose authorship has been attributed to George Reginald Bacchus. It tells the story of a voyage on the yacht Water Lily owned by Sir Reginald Seacombe, the heir to a brewery fortune of several million pounds who has spared no expense on his ship. The Water Lily has fifty cabins and a crew of 40 men. It is outfitted in the finest style.
The novel is narrated by the male secretary to Count X..., who has been invited along with seven other male guests on a cruise starting from the port of Cannes with a destination of "Turkish waters". Eight lady guests are companions to Sir Reginald and his seven friends. Three belong to the "demi-monde" (what we would call escorts today), and two are Parisian actresses. The remaining three are a dressmaker's seamstress/model and two of her friends, the youngest of whom is 17.
Once the ship sets sail, and the men and women are paired up, a series of orgiastic evening events take place with the author describing scenes of rape and physical abuse. Reading this today, I can't help but thinking of descriptions of Jeffrey Epstein's yacht parties with underage sex slaves available for the use and entertainment of his guests.
The Introduction is written by C.J. Scheiner, the author of The Encyclopedia Of Erotic Literature, and contains some interesting history on the publication of this book. This edition is a photo reproduction of the original text which has terrible typesetting and numerous misspellings, supposedly because the book was printed in "France, Holland, or Belgium" to avoid censorship from the non-English local police. Not recommended reading, except for those interested in Victorian/Edwardian male sexual fantasies and erotica.

Phoebe Daring

Phoebe Daring by L. Frank Baum

This is the second of a two-volume series that started with The Daring Twins, a story of how the twins restore their family's lost inheritance with the help of Toby Clark, a teen-age orphan. Toby broke his foot helping the Darings and walks with a limp as we begin this second which features the twin Phoebe. Her brother has gone off to college after the twins graduated high school in the first book.
In this second volume Toby is falsely accused of stealing money and papers belonging to Mrs. Ritchie, a widow who doesn't trust banks and stores her money as well as her papers with her lawyer Judge Ferguson in a locked box that he keeps with other such boxes in a secure cupboard. The orphan Toby has been taken on by the lawyer as a clerk. When the Judge dies and the box goes missing Mrs. Ritchie accuses him of taking her box.
When evidence of the theft shows up at Toby's little shack by the river and he is arrested, Phoebe decides to try to find out who is the real thief in order to free her friend. While it looks like Toby is being framed, the true extent of the situation is much more complex and takes all of Phoebe's resources to uncover the truth.
The book starts slowly and it was almost the middle of the book before I became caught up in the mystery of the stolen box. Baum wrote several girl detective mystery series and if you liked the others you may find this one interesting.

Saint Joan of Arc

Saint Joan of Arc by Vita Sackville-West

Vita Sackville-West (March 9, 1892 – June 2, 1962) was a successful novelist, poet, and journalist, who is most remembered now for her close friendship and relationship with Virginia Wolff. She was the inspiration for Wolff's androgynous Orlando. She published this book 15 years after Joan of Arc was declared a saint in the Catholic Church. So it is probably the first major biography of Joan published after her sainthood. In her Foreword she says "that Joan of Arc presented fundamental problem of the deepest importance" and whose "strange career... remains a story whose conclusion is as yet unfound."
What the author attempts to do is to gather all the first hand accounts, and to arrange Joan's story in roughly chronological order. When contemporary narratives differ on a point, she speculates as to what might be the truth. What I found most difficult in reading the book is that she quotes many of the sources in the original French, assuming her readers have a more than passing knowledge of the language. She also relates the story of Joan's guiding voices in a straightforward manner, not giving them a Divine or medical explanation.
I found the author related Joan's life in a sympathetic way that a female author could better provide than some of the male efforts to tell her story.

The Daring Twins

The Daring Twins by L. Frank Baum (1911) from The Reilly & Britton

L. Frank Baum is best known for his series of books about Dorothy Gale and the magical land of Oz that portrayed a truly American fairy tale. He also wrote series of books, mostly under pseudonyms, for children based on growing up in America at the beginning of the 20th Century. The 1911 novel The Daring Twins is the first of two novels that he published under his own name featuring the adventures of Phoebe and Phil Daring the oldest of five children who, once wealthy, become orphaned and penniless when their father dies soon after his business fails.

Phoebe and Phil are seniors in high school when the story opens. They, their three younger siblings, and and their black mammy Aunt Hyacinth are living with their comatose grandfather, his maid Elaine Halliday, in the grandfather's house which is across the street from their own mansion that had to be sold to pay their father's debts. Their grandfather and their father had been successful well-off members of the community but both lost their wealth and the future seems bleak for the family. Reprinted in 2006 as The Secret of the Lost Fortune, the story revolves around the cleverness of the twins in unravelling the mystery of how the wealth disappeared.

The story opens with a classic representation of a mammy, a stereotype common in the U.S. South at the beginning of the 20th Century of a black woman who worked in a white family and nursed the family's children. Mammies were idealized figures of caregivers: amiable, loyal, maternal, non-threatening, obedient, and submissive, showing deference to white authority and devoted to her employers. The mammy figure is rooted in the history of slavery in the United States. Twenty two years after Baum wrote this book the United Daughters of the Confederacy proposed the erection of a mammy statue on the National Mall. The proposed statue would be dedicated to "The Black Mammy of the South".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammy_archetype_in_the_United_States

Such a woman is Aunt Hyacinth, spending her own savings to take care of the five orphans, caring for them when no one else would. She is contrasted by Grandpa Eliot's caretaker Miss Elaine Halliday, who is commanding, threatening, mean, selfish, and cruel. Yet both are working in the same household and neither is getting paid, loyal to those in their care.

This is a delightful mystery book for children, marred by the racial stereotypes of the time.

Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Dead Rabbits Society: The Lost Reminiscence of John H. Watson, M.D.

Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Dead Rabbits Society: The Lost Reminiscence of John H. Watson, M.D. by Philip J. Carraher

I have a fondness for Sherlock Holmes in all his manifestations from the original A. Conan Doyle stories through Holmesian novels and series by various writers, as well as movies and television series featuring Sherlock. So I enjoyed this "lost reminiscence" that relates a story set in 1893 New York City.

Holmes is living in a New York men's boarding house under an assumed name as he hides from Moriarty's gang when he agrees to help a man who seems to be pursued by a murderer intent on killing him. The man wants Holmes to discover if it is his brother who is responsible for the attacks, as he doesn't want to get the police involved if it is a family matter. What Holmes discovers is much more involved than a sibling rivalry.

The novel is presented to the readers by the author as a manuscript found in 1999 by the Watson family, purportedly written by Holmes' companion Dr.John Watson and never published, but rather hidden at the bottom of a steamer trunk. If you are a fan of Holmesiana like me, then you may enjoy this complicated mystery with a wonderfully Holmesian ending.

Unexpectedly Eighty: And Other Adaptations

Unexpectedly Eighty: And Other Adaptations by Judith Viorst

I have grown old reading Judith Viorst's poetry on aging, one book every ten years (more or less) starting with When Did I Stop Being Twenty in 1987. Fortunately for me, Judith is two decades ahead of me so I can normally get her book relevant to my situation on the discount shelf of my local used book store. This is where I got Unexpectedly Eighty, published in 2010. While I am not eighty yet, I couldn't pass up the chance to see what Life has in store for me if I survive the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The book starts off with a quote from songwriter Gordon Jenkins: "Lingering sunsets, stay a little longer." In her eighties, Judith can see the end of life looming on the horizon, but is still enjoying the simple pleasures available to octogenarians. Always with a bit of humor and nostalgia, she looks at the situation in which she finds herself at this point in time. Of course, it is an upper middle class heteronormative life that she lives filled with grandchildren, an irritating but lovable husband, and middle-aged children who have little need of her.
I think her books appeal to me because they seem like guidance from an idealized American mother that I never had. My mother was an immigrant from what is now Ukraine and her guidance, while equally funny and insightful, was quite different and not always relevant to my life.

The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution

The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution by Larry Gonick

For many years I have been a big fan of Larry Gonick's cartoon nonfiction history books and guides to scientific subjects, so it is with great pleasure that I read (re-read?) his Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1. He has a great way of simplifying and finding humor in historic topics. While this book does suffer from being male-centric, it is a problem shared by many survey histories of this period. I did find his description of the European wars with all the changing leaders of states and shifting alliances somewhat confusing, but I think that is the nature of things rather than his fault. Not being a historian, I cannot verify the accuracy of his treatment, but it is good for quite a few laughs.

The Good Soldier Švejk

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek

The Good Soldier Švejk is a satirical dark comedy of World War I that strongly reminded me of MASH and Catch 22 in their portrayal of the insanity and senselessness of war. Švejk is portrayed as a simple-minded but loyal Czech soldier who is always ready with a humorous anecdote, and the novel deals with his ineffectual attempts to get to the front without ever quite reaching it.
During World War I Austria-Hungary was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual empire, and the novel is based on Hašek's service as a a Czech soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army.
Originally planned as a six volume work, Hašek died while writing the fourth volume. It is the most translated novel of Czech literature. The translation by Cecil Parrott is into British English and reminds me of English language war movies with Germans all speaking with English accents. The work is dated and has a translation that sounds off to an American reader.

A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube

A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube, by Patrick Leigh Fermor

I just finished reading A Time Of Gifts by Patrick Fermor, a 1977 book about the author's travels on foot from coast of Holland to Eszetergom, Hungary over the winter of 1933-34 when he was 19. The book ends with the author standing on this bridge watching the people entering the basilica for Easter services. A second book continues his journey to Constantinople. It is an amazing tale of a journey through Europe between the world wars, told by a man in his sixties about a journey he took over 40 years earlier. His memories of his travels through Holland, Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia as a young man, telling of the people he meets and the places he sees at the beginning of the Nazis rise to power and before the destruction of Europe by World War II, is tempered by his mature knowledge of these places and what has happened over the intervening 40 years.

The Vegetarian

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

The Vegetarian by Han Kang is about a young Korean housewife, Kim Yeong-hye, who becomes a vegetarian after having a disturbing dream about walking through a place full of meat and blood. There are three chapters each told from a different point of view: her husband, her brother-in-law, and, finally, her sister. Each tells about their interactions with her, and their stories are sequential, rather than describing the same incidents from three points of view. We watch the destructive effect on Yeong-hye as society and family fail to understand and reject her choice. As a person who has chosen to live with a plant-based diet I was attracted to this story when it was first published and am happy that I have gotten a chance to read it. It is not an upbeat, feel good novel about food choice and many will find it disturbing and even miss the point.

Ghosts

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier

Really nice graphic novel about a girl whose younger sister has Cystic Fibrosis. They are of Mexican heritage and the novel revolves around the Day of the Dead holiday on November 1. Their family moves to a small town on the Northern California coast where people celebrate the holiday. The Ghosts of the title are the dead who are honored on this day. I am glad to have read this book on November 1 as it helped me to think about the spirits of my mother and father on this day to honor them.

Shanghai Redemption

Shanghai Redemption by Qiu Xiaolong

What I like about Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen novels is their ethical examination of modern Communist China as seen through the eyes of a poet whose Party-assigned job is police detective, but whose moral upbringing comes from the Confucian studies of his father. In this ninth and most recent book of the series Chen is removed from his job as Chief Inspector of Special Investigations for the Shanghai Police Department with a "promotion" to a new position with a substantial title but no power. At the same time someone is attempting to set him up for public disgrace or worse.
Isolated and without official resources, the feeling that someone in a high position is out to destroy him, creates an intense feeling of dread in the hero and the readers. The book can get confusing at times while he tries to figure out who is targeting him and why, but the concluding chapters are so compelling I couldn't put the book down.

Enigma of China

Enigma of China by Qiu Xiaolong

What I like about Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen novels is their ethical examination of modern Communist China as seen through the eyes of a poet whose Party-assigned job is police detective, but whose moral upbringing comes from the Confucian studies of his father. In this eighth book of the series Chen is called into the investigation of the death of Zhou Keng, the son of a major party member who was head of the Shanghai Housing Development Committee. It appears he committed suicide, hanging himself while under house arrest for his excessive life style. But like Jeffrey Epstein's death in a federal prison, the question arises: was it suicide, or an assassination made to look like suicide, to prevent him from bringing down even more powerful people with him? And how dangerous is it to investigate the cause of death in a case like this? I found towards the end I couldn't put this book down until reading the last words left me stunned and in awe. What a story! Written six years ago about China, yet so timely in the USA of 2019.

Don't Cry, Tai Lake

Don't Cry, Tai Lake by Qiu Xiaolong

What I like about Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen novels is their ethical examination of modern Communist China as seen through the eyes of a poet whose Party-assigned job is police detective, but whose moral upbringing comes from the Confucian studies of his father. This seventh book of the series takes place in the resort of Tai Lake, one of the largest freshwater lakes in China that in recent years has been plagued by pollution as the surrounding region experienced rapid industrial development. The challenge of balancing ecological concerns with the need for industrial growth in China is the background to an investigation into the murder of one of the leading polluters of the area.

The Mao Case

The Mao Case by Qiu Xiaolong

This is the sixth of a nine book series of police procedural mysteries featuring Shanghai Inspector Chen Cao. He is a complicated man who studied to be a poet with an academic specialty in modern English poetry, but was assigned by the Communist state to be a policeman, where he has risen to the rank of Chief Inspector of Special Investigations for the Shanghai Police Department. This case is especially sensitive as it involves a granddaughter of one of Mao's mistresses who may have something from her grandmother that could compromise Mao's image.

Qiu Xiaolong having grown up in Shanghai brings a wealth of detail and nuance to his depiction of life, and death, in this modern metropolis. The subtleties of a poet-inspector handling politically sensitive cases in an authoritarian regime trying to embrace change make for fascinating reading, and The Mao Case finds the author in top form. Having read all the previous volumes, I recommend this series highly and plan to read the remaining three titles.

Irene's Last Waltz

Irene's Last Waltz by Carole Nelson Douglas

Carole Nelson Douglas wrote 8 books in a series based on a minor character from the first Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Scandal in Bohemia." This story contains the most memorable female character in Doyles Holmes' stories, Irene Adler, who outsmarts the famous detective and wins his admiration.

Irene's Last Waltz (later reissued as Another Scandal in Bohemia) is the fourth novel in Douglas' series featuring Irene Adler as a singer/actor who is also an amateur detective. Like Sherlock Holmes, Irene has a sidekick named Penelope Huxleigh who accompanies her and keeps a detailed journal of events. While Irene is very flamboyant and daring, Penelope is conservative and proper. It is from Penelope's long lost journals, supposedly discovered by a 20th century scholar Fiona Witherspoon, that the books of the series are drawn.

This book finds Irene and Penelope, as well as Irene's new husband Godfrey, returning to Bohemia at the request of the Rothschilds banking family to work undercover to get information on the political situation. Intrigue builds on intrigue as the threesome find themselves entangled in web of danger that is both entertaining and compelling reading.

This book and the entire series will amuse fans of books based on the Sherlock Holmes series who enjoy the introduction of a feminine and feminist point of view.

The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear

The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

Reverent William Barber's memoir tells the story of how he started the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina and frames it as part of a much larger Third Reconstruction. Thus showing its roots in the original Reconstruction era following the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s (which he calls the Second Reconstruction). He shows how those in power use Divide and Conquer strategies, and how Fusion Politics, the bringing together of many different Social Justice movements, is the key to forming a New Justice Movement that can speak Truth to Power. This is a very good book for people who want to know the story behind the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina.

Charlie Chan in The Pawns of Death

Charlie Chan in The Pawns of Death by Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey M. Wallmann

Charlie Chan is a fictional Chinese American detective based in Honolulu created by author Earl Derr Biggers, who wrote six novels featuring Chan between 1925 and 1932. Biggers loosely based Chan on Honolulu detective Chang Apana. The character was adopted by Hollywood which produced over 3 dozen Charlie Chan movies from 1926 through the 1940s. In the 1970s Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine came into existence to publish the Charlie Chan stories of Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey M. Wallmann who were writing them under the pseudonym Robert Hart Davis. This is one of the longer stories from issue #4 of this publication, issues in August 1974, and now available on its own in print since 2002.
In this story Charlie Chan is on vacation and visiting the Transcontinental Chess Tournament in Paris as the guest of his friend Paris police Prefect Claude DeBevre. The tournament is pitting the British chess champion Roger Mountbatten against a young American challenger Grant Powell. Tensions are high between the two opponents and their respective backers Clive Kettridge and Raymond Balfour, as they all settle into the same floor of the Hotel Frontenac. When Balfour is found murdered in his bed in a room locked from the inside, Debevre asks for Chan's help in solving the mystery before the tournament is ruined.
I don't recommend this book to anyone except hard core fans of Charlie Chan. If you are interested in the famous detective, I recommend starting with one of Biggers' six novels. This is typical mystery magazine fare, light detective fiction written to amuse, and in that it succeeds. The authors of this story rely on the reader having a familiarity with the character and do minimal character development in the text.

The Third Round

The Third Round by H. C. McNeile

Originally published in 1924, this is the third of ten novels about the character Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond that were written by H. C. McNeile under the Pseudonym of Sapper. It is also the third of four of these novels that features his arch enemy Carl Peterson. The others being Bulldog Drummond (1920), The Black Gang (1922), and The Final Count (1926). While the characters make reference to their earlier encounters, there is no need to have read the previous two novels to enjoy or understand this one. After serving in World War I Bulldog Drummond finds that as a demobilised officer he finds peace incredibly tedious and would welcome diversion, as long as it is exciting.
In The Third Round the excitement starts when his wartime buddy Algernon Longworth comes to see Drummond because he is worried about his future father-in-law Professor Goodman, a chemist who has discovered an inexpensive method to make large diamonds that are indistinguishable from the mined gems. When the head of the international diamond syndicate hears about the discovery and that Dr. Goodman plans to present his findings to the Royal Society at their next meeting, he offers Goodman a quarter million pounds to suppress the information, which Goodman refuses to do. Hearing this, Drummond begins to worry for the Professor's life as the information could disrupt the entire diamond industry and fortunes would be lost. When the diamond syndicate fails to persuade Goodman, they agree to pay Peterson a half million pounds to prevent Goodman from making his discovery public. Peterson agrees to help, but sees the secret formula as something he could turn into a multi-million pound fortune if he possessed it. The excitement that Drummond needs is present throughout the rest of the story.
H. C. McNeile was a Captain in the Royal engineers or, as they were commonly known, The Sappers, who were combat engineers working on the front lines during World Was I. During the was he wrote war-themed stories under the pseudonym Sapper. After the was ended this once "unremittingly hearty man" suffered from delicate health, having been gassed and hospitalized several times during his 32 months on the front lines in France. He died at the age of 49 from terminal throat or lung cancer that could be traced back to his wartime service and the gas attacks he endured.
McNeile's Drummond is an Englishman that is typified by a "flamboyantly aggressive patriotism" towards England which is characterized by an opposition to those who challenge its stability or morality. Even his nickname, Bulldog, is symbolic of England. His English gentlemen friends, which McNeile calls "the Breed", fight a conspiracy of foreigners threatening England's stability. Most of the foreigners in the Bulldog Drummond series are villains or morally weak. While McNeile was very popular while he was alive and considered just an upstanding Tory who was proud of his country, after World War II critics start seeing signs of fascism in his writings as well as heavy handed xenophobia and anti-Semitism. In this novel this weak moral character is most obvious in the German chemist Professor Scheidstrun and his wife, who are bent to the will of Carl Peterson.

When Red is Black

When Red is Black by Qiu Xiaolong

When Red is Black uses the story of a murdered author of a book banned by the Communist government over 10 years earlier to describe the delicate balance and shifting forces in a Shanghai torn between its Maoist past and its commercialized future. In a city where state-run businesses find themselves having to compete with new Capitalist enterprises, and loyal Communist workers see their security and privilege stripped away by the new changes, the citizens must learn to balance their proletariat past with their open market future in the midst of rapid change.
The Red of the title refers to the state-approved behavior which in the past was tied to Communist social and economic goals. In the days of Mao, property owners and businessmen were considered Black and sent to re-education camps to learn communist values from the peasants in the fields and Red Guard educators. But in the new Shanghai, it is the businessmen who are reaping benefits of increased income and buying power, while the working class is stuck in low paying jobs in state-run industries and they cannot get the benefits of housing, retirement, and health care. Those who were once Red find they have become Black.
Inspector Chen is very adept at navigating between these different worlds and is a rising star of the Shanghai Police Bureau. However, he is taking a vacation to work for a new commercial development when Yin Lige, the author of a banned book, is found murdered in her Shanghai apartment. So his assistant detective Yu Guangming is given the case to solve but, because of the political nature of the case, he feels great pressure from Chief Inspector Chen Cao to find the killer quickly.
The story is rich in details and shows the many facets of modern Shanghai life. The police procedure almost takes a back seat to the city life of its people as we learn about housing problems, cuisine, Shanghai history, and many other aspects of modern Chinese life.